Of the 19 Canadian Aboriginal grade 3 and 4 children taken through the Coolabah Dynamic Assessment (test-intervention-retest) process in this pilot study, eight made pronounced gains from pre-test to posttest. Among this group of "invisible underachievers," three showed exceptional potential by achieving post-test raw scores that suggest high academic potential. In the context of this study, the term "invisible underachiever" refers to individuals who underperform both in the classroom and on commonly used evidence of potential for higher achievement. Profiles of these three youngsters illustrate the value of dynamic assessment in identifying talent in underachieving students, including those from disadvantaged and minority group backgrounds.

The under-representation of children from culturally different and low SES backgrounds in programs for the gifted is widely recognised. The cause of this under-representation can, at least in part, he attributed to the inappropriateness of the identification methods used. This paper presents the findings of a major study which sought to determine the effectiveness of a specific dynamic testing method for identifying high academic potential in Australian Aboriginal children. The dynamic testing method used in the study involved a test—intervention—retest format where the intervention was designed to address predicted causes of under achievement. The results suggest that dynamic testing was an effective identification tool for the study children, revealing high academic potential in similar proportions to those in the instrument normative population. This study has implications for both gifted education and the education of culturally different children generally arising from the findings that many of the children were ‘invisible' under achievers and that it is possible to identify such underachievement through the dynamic testing process.

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